Auction Campaign

An Auction campaign runs a full online auction: you add items, supporters register with a card on file, bid against each other from their phones, and the winners are charged automatically when the auction closes. Nobody stands in a checkout line at the end of the night.

How It Works

You create the auction campaign and set the dates it runs.
You add items, each with a starting bid and an optional Buy It Now price.
Supporters register to bid. Registration takes about 30 seconds and saves a card with Stripe. The card is not charged at that point.
Bidders bid, watch items, and get outbid alerts by email or text.
When the auction’s end time passes, items with bids are marked Won, and each winner’s card is charged once for everything they won.
Winners get an itemized receipt by email.

Setting Up the Auction

Dates

The auction’s start and end times are the campaign’s Availability dates, set on the Availability tab under Campaign Availability. Both Availability Start and Availability End are required for an auction.

This is the single most common thing to miss. There is no separate “auction start/end” field — the auction runs for exactly the campaign’s availability window.

Header Image

The header image you upload on the campaign’s Overview tab is the cover picture on the auction’s card on your Auctions page. That card shows only while the auction is running, between its Availability Start and Availability End. The auction page itself doesn’t show a banner.

Auction Options

On the campaign’s Options tab you’ll find the settings specific to auctions:

Setting	What it does
Goal	Displays a progress meter on the auction page.
Public URL slug	Forms the public web address of the auction. Changing it breaks any links you’ve already shared.
Who pays platform fees?	Bidder pays the fee or School covers the fee. Leave it on Use account default to follow your account’s platform fee setting.
Anti-snipe extension (seconds)	When a bid lands within this many seconds of the end, the auction is extended by that many seconds. Leave at 0 to turn it off.

The anti-snipe extension extends the **entire auction**, not just the item that got the late bid. All items close at the same moment.

Auctions do not appear in the online store or First Step, and they cannot have a form attached. They have their own public page instead.

Adding Items

Open the campaign and click the Items tab, then New Item.

Field	Required	Notes
Title	Yes
Description	No	Rich text
Photo	No	One photo per item. Square images work best.
Bidding	Yes	Open (the default) or Blind. See Blind Items below.
Fair market value ($)	No
Starting bid ($)	Yes	Minimum $20.00. We suggest 30-50% of fair market value.
Buy It Now ($)	No	Must be at least the starting bid. Not available on blind items.
Minimum bid increment ($)	No	Minimum $5.00, defaults to $5.00.
Reserve price ($)	No	The page shows “Reserve met” once bidding reaches this amount.
Donor name	No	Shown on the item as “Donated by”.
Category	No	Items sharing a category become filter chips on the public page.

Drag items in the list to change the order they appear on the public page.

Items do not have a quantity or their own closing time. Each item has exactly one winner, and every item closes when the auction closes.

Importing Items from a Spreadsheet

Click Import on the Items tab to bulk load items from a CSV or Excel file. The import window includes a sample file you can download and fill in.

The file takes amounts in **cents**, while the web form takes **dollars**. A $20.00 starting bid is `2000` in the file.

Click Export to download your items back out as a CSV.

Sharing a Single Item

Open an item and click Share for a direct link to that item plus a downloadable QR code. Handy for putting a code next to the physical item on a table.

Bidders

The Bidders tab lists everyone registered for the auction, with their contact details, bid count, and whether they have a card on file. Filter by whether they’ve bid or whether a payment method is missing.

From here you can:

Add a bidder manually with the New Registration button, for someone who can’t register themselves.
Edit or delete a bidder. Deleting also removes their bids and watchlist.
Delete an individual bid. The next highest bid becomes the leading bid. The bidder is not notified.
Mark as paid (cash/check) to settle all of a bidder’s won items outside of FutureFund.
Refund a charge in full. Your organization absorbs the platform fee on a refund.

A bidder you add manually has no card on file, so they cannot be charged automatically. Collect their payment yourself and use **Mark as paid (cash/check)**.

How Bidding Works

Registration

Supporters do not need a FutureFund account or a First Step registration. They enter their name, email, and mobile phone, choose how they want to be notified (Email only, Text message only, or Email and text), then save a card through Stripe. The card is vaulted, not charged.

Bidders must have a card saved before they can place a bid. Auctions do not accept offline payments or Cash App.

Placing Bids

The item page shows the current bid, the minimum next bid, the bid count, how many people are watching, and a countdown to close. Bidders can type an amount or use one of three quick-bid buttons.

Bidders can also check Set as my max bid and we’ll auto-bid for you up to this amount. FutureFund then bids on their behalf, one increment at a time, up to their maximum. If two people both set a maximum, the higher one stays in front automatically.

If two bids tie at the same amount, the one placed first wins.

Buy It Now

If an item has a Buy It Now price, a bidder can take it immediately. The item is marked Won right away and anyone watching it is notified that it sold.

Buy It Now disappears once regular bidding reaches the Buy It Now price, so a late buyer can’t undercut the standing high bid.

Watchlists and Alerts

Bidders can add items to a watchlist with the heart button. Depending on the notification channel they picked, they’ll get an email and/or text when:

Someone outbids them
An item they’re watching or leading closes within 15 minutes
An item on their watchlist sells through Buy It Now
They win, with a summary of everything they won
Their card is charged, with an itemized receipt (email only)

Blind (Sealed-Bid) Items

When you add or edit an item, choose Open or Blind under Bidding. Open items work as described above. On a blind item:

Each bidder places one private bid and can change it, up or down, until the auction closes. It can’t go below the starting bid.
Nobody sees anyone else’s bid while the auction is live. Everyone can see how many bids have come in.
After close, the winning amount is revealed. The winner pays exactly what they bid.
There is no Buy It Now, no max bid, and no outbid alerts on blind items. Switching an item to blind removes its Buy It Now price.

Closing and Getting Paid

FutureFund checks for auctions that have ended every few minutes, so closing happens within a few minutes of your end time rather than exactly on the second.

When the auction closes:

Items with no bids are marked Unsold.
Items where bidding never reached the reserve price are also marked Unsold, and nobody is charged.
Everything else is marked Won.

Each winner is then charged once for everything they won, against the card they saved. That single charge also covers any Buy It Now purchases they made earlier in the auction, and any Paddle Raise pledges they made. The charge appears on their statement as the campaign name followed by “auction”.

If a winner is paying by cash or check, use **Mark as paid (cash/check)** on the Bidders tab **before** the auction closes. Once the close runs, their card is charged and you’d have to issue a refund instead.

Donate Your Bid

After your review window, every bidder who lost a blind item (including when the reserve wasn’t met) gets one email and one text. The email has a Donate button for each item they lost, to give the amount they bid as a donation.

Opening the link doesn’t charge anyone. When the bidder confirms on the page, their saved card is charged the full amount of their bid. The offer is open for 14 days, and they get a donation receipt (no goods or services were received).

Platform Fees

Auctions are charged a flat 6.9% platform fee with no per-transaction fixed fee. Use the Who pays platform fees? setting to decide whether the bidder covers it (they’re charged the bid plus 6.9%, and your organization nets the full bid) or your organization covers it (the bidder is charged exactly the bid, and your organization nets it minus 6.9%).

Because there’s no checkout screen for a winner to choose on, an auction always resolves to bidder-pays or school-pays; there’s no “let them decide” option. If the setting is left on Use account default and your account is set to Parent Option Fees, the bidder pays.

Paddle Raise

A Paddle Raise is a live fund-a-need: the auctioneer calls out amounts and bidders raise their paddles. Open the auction and click the Paddle Raise tab.

Create a Paddle Raise, give it a title, and optionally a goal. You can create more than one per auction.
Add the amounts your auctioneer will call, like $2,000, $1,500, and $1,000.
During the event, type a paddle number next to the amount and press Enter. For any other amount, use Another amount.
Click Present to open a full-screen running total with goal progress for the projector. It refreshes on its own.

Good to know:

Only paddles registered for this auction work. A paddle can pledge at several amounts, but only once per amount.
Bidders get a confirmation text and email a couple of minutes after you enter the pledge, so a mistyped paddle number can be fixed before the wrong family hears about it.
Pledges are charged together with any items the bidder won, in one charge after the review window. They count toward the auction’s raised total and follow the Who pays platform fees? setting.
Mark as paid (cash/check) on the Bidders tab covers pledges too.
Bidders see their pledges on a Your paddle page. They open it by clicking their paddle number in the auction’s top bar.

Auction Dashboard

The auction has a dashboard showing totals at a glance: total items, items with at least one bid, items sold and unsold, registered bidders, bidders who bid, winners, total sold, plus Top Bidders and Top Items by Bid Count.

Notes

Starting bids have a $20.00 floor and bid increments a $5.00 floor. These cannot be lowered.
Settlement is tracked per item, so marking part of a bidder’s win as paid by check leaves the rest chargeable.
Refunds are full-amount only.